Abortion Care as Moral Work

Ethical Considerations of Maternal and Fetal Bodies

Edited by Johanna Schoen

SERIES: Critical Issues in Health and Medicine

Rutgers University Press

Abortion Care as Moral Work brings together the voices of abortion providers, abortion counselors, clinic owners, neonatologists, bioethicists, and historians to discuss how and why providing abortion care is moral work. The collection offers voices not usually heard as clinicians talk about their work and their thoughts about life and death. In four subsections--Providers, Clinics, Conscience, and The Fetus--the contributions in this anthology explore the historical context and present-day challenges to the delivery of abortion care. Contributing authors address the motivations that lead abortion providers to offer abortion care, discuss the ways in which anti-abortion regulations have made it increasingly difficult to offer feminist-inspired services, and ponder the status of the fetus and the ethical frameworks supporting abortion care and fetal research. Together these essays provide a feminist moral foundation to reassert that abortion care is moral work.

Beautiful, depressing, and hopeful. This book is crucial for understanding the realities of abortion in America. As told by providers, women who have abortions, and scholars, the stories in this book upend the lie that paints abortion users and practitioners as frivolous and uncaring human beings. Abortion Care reveals the the care, love, and deep morality that guides abortion practice.'
Leslie J. Reagan, author of Dangerous Pregnancies: Mothers, Disabilities, and Abortion in Modern America

This collection contains some truly moving personal testimony that deserves a wide readership. The voices of providers are what make the collection so powerful. Janet Golden, author of Babies Made Us Modern: How Infants Brought Americans into the Twentieth Century

Beautiful, depressing, and hopeful. This book is crucial for understanding the realities of abortion in America. As told by providers, women who have abortions, and scholars, the stories in this book upend the lie that paints abortion users and practitioners as frivolous and uncaring human beings. Abortion Care reveals the the care, love, and deep morality that guides abortion practice.'
Leslie J. Reagan, author of Dangerous Pregnancies: Mothers, Disabilities, and Abortion in Modern America

This collection contains some truly moving personal testimony that deserves a wide readership. The voices of providers are what make the collection so powerful. Janet Golden, author of Babies Made Us Modern: How Infants Brought Americans into the Twentieth Century

JOHANNA SCHOEN is a professor of history at Rutgers University-New Brunswick in New Jersey. She is the author of Choice and Coercion: Birth Control, Sterilization, and Abortion in Public Health and Welfare, and Abortion after Roe.

Introduction: Providing Abortion Care
Part 1 Providers
1 A Narrative
Morris Turner
2 Being an Abortionist
Marc Heller
3 Establishing Abortion Counseling
Terry Beresford
Part 2 Clinics
4 Providing Compassionate Abortion Care in a Hostile Climate
Amy Hagstrom Miller
5 Improving Abortion Care One Clinic at a Time
Renee Chelian
Part 3 Conscience
6 From Conscience Clauses to Conscience Wars
Sara Dubow
7 Abortion as an Act of Conscience
Curtis Boyd and Glenna Halvorson-Boyd
8 The Meaning of Viability in Abortion Care
Shelley Sella
9 Dangertalk: Voices of Abortion Providers
Lisa A. Martin, Jane A. Hassinger, Michelle Debbink, and Lisa H. Harris
Part 4 The Fetus
10 How Science Is Made: Nineteenth-Century Embryology and Fetal Interpretations
Shannon K. Withycombe
11 A Feminist Defense of Fetal Tissue Research
Thomas V. Cunningham
12 Definitions of Viability and Their Meaning for Neonatal Care
John Colin Partridge
Notes on Contributors
Index

Related Titles